


Heart-eating

by la_novatrice (fleurs_du_mol)



Series: Ténébreuse et profonde unité [1]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alternate Ending, Drowning, Ficlet, Gen, M/M, Post-Canon, Post-Episode: s03e13 The Wrath of the Lamb
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-12
Updated: 2018-04-12
Packaged: 2019-04-21 22:42:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14295045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fleurs_du_mol/pseuds/la_novatrice
Summary: Hannibal must have been alive. They both swam. The alternative was that Will had dragged a corpse to land.





	Heart-eating

He had dreams about the water, now. They felt worse than his old nightmares because they were hopeful. In these dreams of being submerged in dark, cold, roiling water, there was a hand in his.

Hannibal must have been alive. They both swam. The alternative was that Will had dragged a corpse to land. 

He remembered, he thought he remembered, Hannibal swimming. Or floundering. Factoring for weakness there was strange. Will understood injury, physics, and the fragility of the human body, but Hannibal always transcended all of it.

Even if he’d been alive in the water, he didn’t breathe again on land. Maybe Will hadn’t done Hannibal a favor by trying to hold on to him. In the end, it seemed he’d been some daemon, some being who could only be revived by his proper element. Will had no doubt Hannibal’s was water. 

Whether it was what flesh and organs needed - or it symbolized the flow of music, thoughts, emotions - water felt the most “Lecter.” It was temperamental, gentle, necessary, and deadly by turns: streams wore down boulders. Floods wiped out cities. Baths were soothing. Swimming in a summer lake was pleasurable. You needed to stay hydrated. Nearly drowning was excruciating.

In his dreams, Will always let go of the hand, then broke the surface after he spent too much time trying to sight a body he just couldn’t find. His lungs burning, he panicked. Eventually, his arms felt heavy. He couldn’t swim any longer. When he gave up and let himself go limp, Hannibal found him. There was safety, then. 

Hannibal was healed, glorious; Proteus, the shapeshifter, transformed by blood and battle, regenerated by seawater. Will weighed no more than a toddler in his arms and they made it to shore.

It was basic psychology; Freud would have been ecstatic. Will’s mind couldn’t reckon with the fact that the first time he kissed Hannibal, it wasn’t really a kiss. It was mouth-to-mouth after tentative chest compression. In the moment, he couldn’t recall which was best for someone who’d taken water into their lungs, and Hannibal was so battered he didn’t want to damage him further. 

He wouldn’t kiss another person without feeling cold lips and a residually warm tongue and inner mouth. Warmth had ebbed away as Hannibal’s, the body’s, core temperature dropped. Most of it was probably Will’s. But as Proteus, Hannibal kissed him. Held him. The suggestion of danger, of recklessness, was there as it would have been in life. Proteus was, after all, a god, and Hannibal was probably as close to a deity as a person could get. But their kisses were full of the heat Will had craved. 

The reality was different. Time was elusive; he didn’t know how long he laid with his head on Hannibal’s chest. He couldn’t say when he decided to sink him into the sea, either, but the water and moonlight took him.


End file.
